Rodeo
One goal is to keep your toes turned during the entire ride, but something tells me it’s not the same as a ballerina mastering first position. It’s also important to swing your feet over the horse’s shoulders in a split second, and as the animal bucks, to bend those knees and finish your spurring stroke, which sounds a little like the advice Lon Kruger might give on shooting free throws if his players did so from a saddle.
Attitude adjustment is old hat for cowboy Chris Harris.
Fred Whitfield was enjoying Wednesday afternoon’s mundane rehearsal for tonight’s first of 10 opening ceremonies of the National Finals Rodeo.
Guilherme Marchi of Brazil came within four seconds of making “perfeito” — that’s “perfect” in Portuguese — on the final day of the Professional Bull Riders World Finals on Sunday.
Moments after Guilherme Marchi finished second in the Professional Bull Riders championship last year for the third straight time, winner Justin McBride told the disheartened Brazilian that 2008 would be his year.
Guilherme Marchi could have been polishing his world championship belt buckle by now.
North Carolina is a hotbed for stock-car racing, and it’s not the first locale that comes to mind as a breeding ground for bull riders.
At 29, Chris Shivers is the same age as Justin McBride, his fellow two-time Professional Bull Riders world champion.
Getting injured turned out to be one of the best things to happen to bull rider J.B. Mauney, who suffered broken ribs, a lacerated liver and a bruised kidney and spleen in June 2005.
Any bull ride can leave a rider bruised, battered and bloodied. Even if he makes the eight-second buzzer, he still has to dismount safely, and bulls seem to get angrier when they unload their passenger.
